”To face me in all my glory would be less than sporting, so you shall face but one of my aspects, the one you have chosen.
We have little time–the Bloodmoon sinks low in the sky.
Prepare yourself, mortal, for now you are the Hunted.”

That would make an amazing boss/mini boss mechanic where they spawn minions and regain health once they have died. Your DPS would have to be epic to get past it or you would have to have a second tank to keep the minis aggro and not kill them.

Regardless of Race. Regardless of Religion. Regardless of Politics.

I will fight for the right to live, for gold in my hand and the good of the world.

Tantum religio putuit suadere.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.

That would make an amazing boss/mini boss mechanic where they spawn minions and regain health once they have died. Your DPS would have to be epic to get past it or you would have to have a second tank to keep the minis aggro and not kill them.

The shacknews preview have something more awesome than the spiders. Just imagine fighting a bunch of dude and having a few going in the back to do this:

Even more threatening are Factional Synergy attacks, when like-types combine for a more devastating strike. We were shown a group of necromancers in which one sacrificed himself, and the others participated in a ritual to turn his corpse into a powerful monster.

That would make an amazing boss/mini boss mechanic where they spawn minions and regain health once they have died. Your DPS would have to be epic to get past it or you would have to have a second tank to keep the minis aggro and not kill them.

The shacknews preview have something more awesome than the spiders. Just imagine fighting a bunch of dude and having a few going in the back to do this:

Even more threatening are Factional Synergy attacks, when like-types combine for a more devastating strike. We were shown a group of necromancers in which one sacrificed himself, and the others participated in a ritual to turn his corpse into a powerful monster.

I find religious/magical nut jobs who have suicidal tendencies less frightening than cannibalistic spiders that are probably massive. Funny how the world works eh?

Regardless of Race. Regardless of Religion. Regardless of Politics.

I will fight for the right to live, for gold in my hand and the good of the world.

Tantum religio putuit suadere.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.

Here is a bit of a summary that I have done for the IGN article and my take on what has been said.

“Elder Scrolls Online lets you rummage through most crates and collect items such as skill books, but you can’t physically pick them up and drop them at your leisure.”

So this is not really anything new; we knew there was going to be a codex system for you to collate all of your information. To be honest I find this more appealing than carrying a load of books with me and not knowing which ones I do and don’t have at home. Another point from this is that we can go through crates; here I am presuming that they are a bit more like the chests we see in the open world in games like SWTOR rather than the ones we see in Skyrim. Either way it is nice to know that we still have some interaction with the world and not completely disjointed like most MMOs.

“Fully voiced choice-based dialogue options”

I am not sure whether this is going to be the same system as what we see in ES games where you can talk to anyone or whether it will be a system where you can only interact with a few NPCs. I would hope the former.

The Article also mentions the quest system in the game; it seems far more dynamic than normal MMOs, where actions affect consequences. This is going to leave us with a far more immersive story; I just hope that this will not take too much out of the development teems time like it did in SWTOR.

“Spell combos that require two or more players”

This sounds as if it is far more than what has been suggested through the synergy system. While before we would assume that someone puts down oil and a mage lights it or a tanks armour reflects lightning onto many mobs; this proposes that complete spells with defined characteristics, damage etc. can be created when two players work together, not just an enhancement of a spell. Perhaps I have read it wrong or the writer has written their interpretation wrong but if I am correct then playing a mage with a friend seems like it will be a much more sociable and fun experience that opens up a lot of possibilities once you start customizing abilities.

There is a long section on stealth that is a bit hashed together; what we can take from it though is that, in order to sneak more effectively you have to level up your medium armour (above level seven at least). Whether this is specific to medium armour I do not know, but you would assume that light armour would be better than medium when sneaking. Never the less you can, it seems, sneak right from the off.

Another point made is that weapon swapping is not unlocked until level 15. I am glad that this has been announced; I want to create an archer and am not too bothered about using other weapons. It seems that ESO will push you towards making a decision of what you want to be focused in for the first 15 levels and then afterward you can expand your skill set and change weapons mid-flight.

Apparently there is first person combat and from what the author has written it is quite an experience. This puts my mind to rest and probably a lot of other peoples; I always play in first person when I can in single player games. While I play third person in MMOs I will still be a fan of having first person perspectives that are not simply changing the camera but actually changing the way combat works in front of you. “Particularly for the promise it holds for archery”. That makes me even happier!

“Exploration and questing rather than grinds”

Thank god, that’s all I’m saying.

“There are no raids”

Something must have got lost in translation here; the idea of no raids is ridiculous and I am sure that they have been suggested in some form or another. As much as I like four-five man dungeons, you don’t get the sense of achievement as completing a raid with twenty plus people.

Regardless of Race. Regardless of Religion. Regardless of Politics.

I will fight for the right to live, for gold in my hand and the good of the world.

Tantum religio putuit suadere.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.

It seems that right off the bat this game has a lot of customizations in store for us; from what I have read it seems like we are seeing a move from standard MMO character creation to personalized characters that everyone wants.

“I was given a choice between Dragonknight, Templar, and Sorcerer. The devs let slip that there will be a fourth class at launch called the Nightblade”

I don’t know if I am missing something here but I was under the impression that there would be six classes to choose from, not four. If I have got this wrong please correct me for my own sake but if there are only four classes at launch, it doesn’t seem like much choice. Are we going to see two warrior types and then a mage and stealth class and that’s all? I hope not.

“Increased his gut size to the maximum”

I really hope this is what it sounds like. In SWToR we saw that there were four shapes for your body; scrawny and pathetic, teenager, hench 6 foot four Spec Ops member or your average American (only joking there, don’t start hating on me). This was quite frankly pathetic; while I myself do fit into the hench 6 foot four Spec Ops category, I understand that not everyone does and I would like there to be more option. With reference to the quote; it sounds like there is an option for just moving the stomach out rather than a general BMI of 500. If you want to show off your love for Nord Mead and the beer belly it has given you, you can do.

“Your conversations with the denizens of Tamriel involve making dialogue choices that blend clues about quest objectives with bits of lore and flavour”

I am quite honestly hopping that when we accept a quest everything is not set out in the top right hand corner of your screen of where you need to go and what to do when you are there. I would find it far more interesting to be told to speak to people throughout the world about this one teddy bear that a child has lost; find it one hundred hours later when you have forgotten about it, rather than go on a hunt that lasts all of three minutes and is not rewarding at all.

“Daedric Summoning skill line”

Does this mean that there are separate lines of progression for Daedric, undead and normal familiars? If so then would these have different damage styles that would be more advantageous in different circumstances? I think it has been mentioned in one of the recently released videos that there are several skills lines; you would need to watch them to find out exactly. (I believe it mentioned Vampire/Werewolf Mage/Warriors guild). This article goes on to explain this.

“There will be at least 15 different skill lines available in ESO”

Sword and shield, Two Handed, Duel Wielding, Staff, Bow, Mages Guild, Warriors Guild, Vampirism, Werewolf. That’s eight confirmed. The addition of The Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild to this only adds two more to make ten so there are at least five others that are yet to be announced. I have no idea what the others could be; possibly racial or faction lines?

Regardless of Race. Regardless of Religion. Regardless of Politics.

I will fight for the right to live, for gold in my hand and the good of the world.

Tantum religio putuit suadere.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.

Don’t forget that there are two separate lines for staves, Restoration and Destruction, as well as 3 lines that class related, as in Daedric Summoning and such for the Sorcerer, and another line for Race, which I find to be interesting and very curious as to what’s in it. So yes, at least 15 and who knows what else they are going to come up with.

@Bromjunaar I was thinking about restoration/destruction but I didn’t know whether that would class as one. Also with the race lines I have no idea how these are going to work and how they will balance it all or whether it would force people to play into certain classes for a race. I guess we just need to have faith in the devs to do it right.

@adam123456789098 Haha ye it is a lot of information but at least you know your facts now

Regardless of Race. Regardless of Religion. Regardless of Politics.

I will fight for the right to live, for gold in my hand and the good of the world.

Tantum religio putuit suadere.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.

So five skills are nice and we can master two of the five available or just be all-rounders’ by putting points into each. It seems ESO has not decided to go with the SWTOR model, which was quite honestly ridiculous, where you are forced to only have one producing skill and two gathering skills.

It seems from the article that you can just collect ingredients as you go around the world. This perhaps gives us a bit better indication as to what the inventory system will be like; we know that it will be slot based but if we are going to be lugging around weapons, armour, loot and crafting materials etc. we are going to need a lot of space. I think the inventory will be quite large.

The Provisioner skill has two sub categories of items that you can make so there may possibly more options for you in other crafting skills. I doubt these are chosen lines though, rather that they are just options for smoothing out the interface.

It notes in the article that you can craft racial armours and also weapons; these will have to be learnt through playing the game. This could come through PvP or perhaps quests where you have to fight faction NPCs; however, I think it more likely that it would come through PvP or perhaps skill mastery.

Now we come to the really interesting part; additives. These are used to customize the item you are crafting; there are three additive slots and you can place five of the same additives in each. Depending on the different forms of additives in the game we are going to see some totally unique custom weapons. When we think of the fact that raid weapons can be adapted you can see how powerful they would become through the addition of additives.

It seems that you may even be able to add three forms of the same additive to a recipe; this would mean that you could get fifteen of the same bonus added to a weapon. That could be 15% extra shock damage or 15% better defence etc. Either way it will mean that there will be no hard and fast rule of which weapon to use and what to use it against. There is possibly a catch though; the way I read the article is that a certain combination of additives will work but get it wrong and it won’t. So my example of +15% shock damage may not be a viable recipe; perhaps you would need 14% and 1% of something else to make to item work.

The failure system has not been discussed so far as I can see; while the possibility of failure has been mentioned the details of it are not known. If you fail a recipe do you lose everything or just the additives? This is going to have a significant impact of the initial crafting community; people may not be willing to risk their hard earned additives on some random recipe. This could hold back our understanding of the best weapons in the game; obviously hardcore crafters will still experiment but we need it to be wide scale in order to find out the best recipes.

The article notes that Paul Sage has said that as you craft more you will become better at choosing the right additives; this makes me think that you will lose them if you fail at it or make something that you didn’t intend too. Also that, additives of a certain type will have the same effect. For instance; once you know that red berries, red wool and blood all give you a health boost, anything you see that is red in future will be a health related item.

A final note is that these items will be tradable but it seems only player to player when the game launches. There is no sign of a marketplace at launch. I think this is a good move; it would encourage a better community that is more connected and build bonds with suppliers of additives and ingredients and producers and buyers etc.

Regardless of Race. Regardless of Religion. Regardless of Politics.

I will fight for the right to live, for gold in my hand and the good of the world.

Tantum religio putuit suadere.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.

I think that they are going to have a resonable size of your personal storage space and what you can carry and then just make the armors and such take up enough slots that it becomes impractical to carry around two or more full sets of armor, otherwise you’re going to have people running around with three sets of complete armor for each line just so that they have a specific type of armor for each situation that they might need it.

@cheesydoodle – I’m pretty sure you can only “master” one profession. They gave the 1000 pt example several times, saying if you have 1000 points then it would take 800 to max one prof giving you 200 points to put somewhere else.

@Yevon I know I did think it was a bit odd that Paul Sage gave that example in several different interviews but the article said you can master two. Either the article is wrong or Paul was just using that example a bit badly. To be hones I think the article may be correct as Paul Sage does state that it is only an example and the article does give some detail to the subject; it seems to me hard to make that information up or miss remember one or two skills, especially when you take notes.

Regardless of Race. Regardless of Religion. Regardless of Politics.

I will fight for the right to live, for gold in my hand and the good of the world.

Tantum religio putuit suadere.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.